Eat it on the Radio

In his book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Vermont author and environmentalist Bill McKibben focuses on the importance of strong communities for the health and well-being of the planet and its people. He suggests that we can strengthen our home regions by producing more of our own food, generating more of our own energy, and even creating more of our own culture and entertainment. To achieve these goals, McKibben advises, we need to build or rebuild local institutions that draw people together, and one such institution that he cites in his book is a low-power radio station in the Mad River Valley: WMRW-LP Warren, 95.1 FM.

A Passion for Artisan Soap

My soap-making journey started a decade or so ago, when I was becoming more and more sensitized (allergic) to mainstream, detergent-type soaps. Eventually I just couldn’t use them anymore. As I researched the subject, I became alarmed at what was being used in cosmetic products on the market, not to mention all the harmful chemicals leaching into our waterways as a result of those products. I decided to start making my own soap, and the enthusiasm I had back then for soap making has now turned into a passion and a business for me. My only regret is that I didn’t start making them sooner!

Halal in the Hills

Art Meade is a 59-year-old livestock and poultry farmer with a thick Maine accent and a farm on Route 100 in Morrisville. He also happens to run the only state-licensed slaughter facility in Vermont that caters to Muslims who practice halal slaughter. This is the Muslim tradition of swiftly slitting the throat of a domesticated meat animal with a sharp knife; the animal is believed to be killed instantly and painlessly (though there is some debate about that). Muslims, who are directed by their religion to eat halal meat, can purchase such meat in Vermont stores, but some prefer to do the slaughter themselves.

How to Start a Community Garden

Back in January, as my husband and I searched for a place to live in Middlebury, we had big plans to create a summer vegetable garden. But it quickly became clear that housing in town with gardening space wouldn’t be easy to find. Apartments that advertised a “big yard” always seemed to have a “scruffy lawn,” and few landlords reacted well to my desire to dig out a portion of that lawn to plant vegetables.

The Story of Bread

Green Mountain Flour, a new artisan bakery in Windsor owned and operated by Zachary Stremlau and Daniella Malin, takes a unique approach to its craft: it uses local wheat, local milling, and local fuel to create its flours, breads, and pizzas. Here, woodcuts that comprise the bakery’s logo tell “the story of bread,” echoing a time in early New England when, according to Zachary and Daniella, “the farmers knew the miller, the miller milled with stone, and the baker baked with fire.”

How to Get Grounded

On a road in Cabot, not far from the land that Laura Dale and Cyrus Pond bought this past March, you can look out to the west at a horizon dominated by the undulating spine of the Green Mountains. For many young farmers in Vermont, the cost of land can seem as daunting and insurmountable as the largest of those mountains in the dead of winter.

Tapping for Taste

There are people in Vermont who prefer fake maple syrup—not just people who are looking for something cheaper but who actually prefer the stuff made of corn syrup. There are other people in Vermont who don’t talk to those fake syrup types. And there are Vermonters who stand by Grade B for all occasions and others who keep a little Fancy on hand.

Classy Wheat

Last year, I arrived at The Putney School as their new gardener and was tasked with getting the high school students at this Putney boarding and day school excited about gardening. Early on, the farm manager told me he had planted some wheat on the edge of one of the farm’s hayfields. I was intrigued.

Farm Camp—Planting Confidence, Harvesting Strength

As I downshift off the Putney exit of I-91, my husband, Jerry, is roused from his dozing by the hollow sound of several hundred jostling maple syrup jugs. It’s April, time to buy containers for our maple syrup at Bascom’s 10% container sale, and time to post Farm Camp flyers.

The First Localvores

I have always been fascinated by wild foods. When I was a kid growing up in Indiana we had a copy of Euell Gibbons’ book Stalking the Wild Asparagus, and I remember how exciting it was to read about eating cattails, making acorn flour, and brewing sassafras tea. As I recall, the cattail stalks tasted a bit like mild turnips, the acorn flour was tannic and needed a lot of processing before being edible, and the tea tasted like something just this side of root beer. Little did I know as a kid that wild edibles such as cattails and acorns were just a couple of the foods historically gathered and consumed by the first people to inhabit the state I would one day call home.

Getting Everyone to the Table

Back in January, as my husband and I searched for a place to live in Middlebury, we had big plans to create a summer vegetable garden. But it quickly became clear that housing in town with gardening space wouldn’t be easy to find. Apartments that advertised a “big yard” always seemed to have a “scruffy lawn,” and few landlords reacted well to my desire to dig out a portion of that lawn to plant vegetables.

A 10-Year Stroll

With hundreds of spectators lining Main Street in Brattleboro, the groomed and bedazzled heifers are led down the center of the street to the cheers of onlookers. Hundreds of cows preen for the delighted crowd, followed by more farm animals (bulls, goats, and horses), tractors (also decorated for the parade) floats, clowns, marching bands, street performers, and all manner of groups touting their various farm affiliations.

Cookbooks, Culture, and Community

The case for local nuts. No, I’m not talking about your odd mother-in-law, your bizarre ex-boyfriend, or that whacko who expresses herself, extensively, at town meeting. And I don’t mean aficionados or extremely enthusiastic people. I mean those portable nuggets of nutrition, held aloft by tree limbs. A nut, technically speaking, is a big seed enclosed by a hard shell. And even though you’re now fantasizing about almond and macadamia instead of weirdo and diehard, I’m here to tell you about what nuts we can grow in Vermont, and why.

After the Fire

Barn’s burnt down…now I can see the moon. –Chinese proverb

Yet the converse is also true: Yes, we can see the moon, but it won’t shelter tractors, nor can vegetables be washed, packed, and stored inside its lovely glow. Oh, the moon is beautiful, but what can it do for food and a business after the fire is put out?

Three Square—Fall 2008

Written By

Denny Partridge

Written on

September 01 , 2008

Growing up in Vermont I ate chokecherries, dandelions, venison, and tempura daylilies. I recently returned to live here full time. Since then, I’ve noticed that conversation often turns to food. What’s for dinner? This is the fourth and last installment of a series in which I’ve visited a variety of Vermonters in their homes, peered into their iceboxes, and shared their thoughts about what they eat. Because of the often personal nature of their stories, I’ve chosen to omit their last names.

EDITH

“I don’t care much about cooking,” Edith tells me. “I don’t put much stock in it. My highest value is children. I love children. I wrote a history of Weathersfield for the children here. When they took a field trip to the old town cemetery, they knew the people buried there, they recognized all the names.”

We’re sitting on the sun porch outside Edith’s kitchen door. She has a pile of books beside her to read—history, poetry, nature. Old toys are neatly lined up: a dollhouse, a small gas station, toy trucks, and a few dolls, ready for young visitors. Edith holds on to a hefty cane; her leg is bum now, she says. She is 88.

Forty years ago, when a highway was routed through her family’s New Hampshire farm, Edith and her husband and four children moved to Vermont, to Weathersfield, where her husband’s aunts—privileged maiden ladies from Philadelphia—had a classic Vermont farmhouse and a barn big enough for Edith’s family to build a house in. When the aunts died, Edith’s family moved into the main house.

Edith has had a full life as a writer, newspaper publisher, radio commentator, teacher, mother, and community leader. She lives alone now, but with family close by. Her mind is lively and critical. And her applesauce, which I’d tasted at a friend’s house, is delicious.

“I make scads of applesauce. I work around the bugs. I cut up the apples. I don’t skin them. Then I put them in the Foley food mill. The other thing I make is vichyssoise. It’s the Vichyssoise a la Ritz recipe from The New York Times Cookbook. Four leeks and an onion, a stick of butter, five potatoes, and a quart of chicken broth. Boil this for 35 minutes and then put it all in the blender. Freeze that in small portions; when you want some, defrost it. When you’re ready to eat it, heat it up, and add the milk and cream. I make lots and eat it all year long.”
Edith uses a blender, never a food processor. “Years ago I wanted a blender and asked my son Will to get me one. ‘I think I have one in the back of my car,’ he said, and he did. He went right out and got it. I’m still using it, the same one.”

“I’m not a venturesome cook,” she explains. “I have greens for lunch and iced coffee; sometimes soup, too. For breakfast I have a poached egg on toast, coffee, orange juice, and strawberry jam. But the strawberry bed isn’t doing very well this year.”

“We’re having marvelous lettuce this summer, though, mesclun, and three kinds of garlic. My daughter-in-law isn’t crazy about gardening. She takes care of the onions. My daughter Ibby—she lives in North Carolina—plants all the squash when she comes up to visit.”

It’s her youngest son Charlie’s garden now, she tells me. She gave it over to him this year. “And he’s started going by some book. Here I’ve been planting for years with good tomatoes, and now Ibby and Charlie have put wool around them and they’re not getting any sun. Wool!” Edith shakes her head, but is clearly pleased by the collective family effort: six people creating one large and beautiful garden.

“I started my first one in 1948. Our Italian neighbors taught me to braid and hang onions. I learned everything else about gardening from our Russian neighbors, the Prohodskys.”

I ask what she ate growing up. “My father loved to make quahog chowder. We had baked beans on Saturday night. On Sunday we’d have Welsh rarebit around the fire. We lived in Roxbury, in Boston. He had a wonderful little garden, with two pear trees, an apple tree, tomatoes, and rhubarb.”

Before I leave Edith gets the car out and we drive around back. She points out two large apple trees. “Aunt Margaret—the nice one, Ibby used to call her—her ashes are scattered there, under the Northern Spy. We planted it in her memory. Aunt Mary’s are over there, under the Yellow Transparent.”

We pass the sugarhouse where this year Edith and her sons made 16 gallons of maple syrup in 10 boils. The pig house is empty, but the woodpile, stacked along the road, is high. It’ll heat the main house, as well as the barn-house where her son Graham and his wife now live.

I spy a wild turkey on the hillside. We stop, and a parade of small turkeys slowly comes into view. Edith is delighted. “Look! They’re back! And this time they’ve brought their whole family with them.”

What we do

A quarterly magazine devoted to covering local food, sustainable farming, and the many people building the Vermont food system.

Vermont's Local Banquet Magazine illuminates the connections between local food and Vermont communities. Our stories, interviews, and essays reveal how Vermont residents are building their local food systems, how farmers are faring in a time of great opportunity and challenge, and how Vermont’s agricultural landscape is changing as the localvore movement shapes what is grown and raised here.